DISCUSSION WITH FREMY 113 



gave myself the malicious pleasure of bringing a large 

 number of very small closed flasks, into each of which I 

 had aspirated a drop of must from bits of crushed grapes. 

 I broke the tapered point of many of them before the 

 Academy, and in all by a sharp hissing, which was heard 

 at a distance, the fermentation of the drop of liquid 

 within was made evident. M. Fremy was present and 

 kept silent." x 



It must be said in commendation of Fremy that he 

 did not cherish any ill will because of these thumps, 

 feeling, confusedly at first but more and more clearly 

 later, that his opponent was right. He loved the truth, 

 although he was not always very prompt to recognize it, 

 and when it was necessary to have a treatise written on 

 the ferments and fermentations for the Encyclopedia, 

 the publication of which he directed some years later, he 

 went for this purpose not to one of his own pupils, but 

 to one of Pasteur's. 2 No one could terminate a polemic 

 more gallantly! 



This discussion, nevertheless, did not remain sterile. 

 There were no sterile discussions with Pasteur, because 

 he always resorted to experiment to combat the argu- 

 ments opposed to him. He thus found himself drawn 

 into diverse fields, which he would never have approached 

 of his own accord, and, as he had perspicacity, he did not 

 fail to make discoveries therein. Thus it is that he de- 

 rived from his controversy with Fremy a multitude of 

 curious ideas on the distribution of germs in the air, 

 and germs of yeast on the skins of the grape ideas 

 which he utilized much later, and which we shall en- 

 counter again. 



1 Etudes sur le vin, p. 58. 



2 To Emile Duclaux, author of this book. Fr<5my's Encyclopedic 

 Chimique, Tome ix, l re Section, Chimie Biologique Par M. Duclaux. 

 8vo, p. vii, 908. Dunod, Editeur, Paris, 1883. Trs. 



